Last night, my husband said,
"I think I'm addicted to reading. Right now, I want that good feeling that comes from reading a book, without actually reading a book."
Thursday, July 30, 2009
Wednesday, July 15, 2009
Happy Potter Day!
Instructions for awesome, cheap, and easy magic wands here. We made about a dozen.
Sunday, July 12, 2009
Green Eggs and Ham Revisited
My friend Luisa blogged the other day about the "immersion" activities she's using to prepare her family for a trip to France. We're planning a trip to Boston, so we did a pared-down version of her plan, and on the way learned that Dr. Seuss was born in Boston. That, of course, meant we had to pull out Green Eggs and Ham.
While reading aloud, I had fun watching Hammer, age 12, and Buffy, age 10, revisit the book with new eyes—and love it in a new way. They laughed out loud at the silly rhymes and stopped me so they could study the funny expressions on the characters' faces. Dr. Seuss's bio said that he'd taken a bet that he couldn't write a book using only 50 words. So Buffy and I went through the whole book, writing down each new word as it occurred: 49 total, if we counted right.
It happens that I'd recently spent a minute or two mourning the passing of the old Green Eggs days. But when a kid becomes a seasoned old critic of 12 or 43, it turns out Green Eggs is still waiting patiently to be rediscovered—and loved all over again.
While reading aloud, I had fun watching Hammer, age 12, and Buffy, age 10, revisit the book with new eyes—and love it in a new way. They laughed out loud at the silly rhymes and stopped me so they could study the funny expressions on the characters' faces. Dr. Seuss's bio said that he'd taken a bet that he couldn't write a book using only 50 words. So Buffy and I went through the whole book, writing down each new word as it occurred: 49 total, if we counted right.
It happens that I'd recently spent a minute or two mourning the passing of the old Green Eggs days. But when a kid becomes a seasoned old critic of 12 or 43, it turns out Green Eggs is still waiting patiently to be rediscovered—and loved all over again.
Thursday, July 9, 2009
Fledged
Sigh. I'm an empty-nester, as of July 2. At least this year there's the hope that Mama hummingbird will come back and rebuild the nest again next year.
Baby #1 disappeared before I noticed they were starting to fledge. Baby #2 stuck around for a few days, first in the nest, then on a branch beside it, preening, flapping—it looked like procrastinating to me. Perhaps he (she?) was just enjoying a little elbow room with #1 gone. I watched nervously all morning, but eventually #2 launched with no apparent trouble.
And now I'm all alone.
Picture by Kiyoteru Tokuyasu, and lots more hummer info here, as usual.
The place for me on the 4th of July...
...is under a big old tree in a city park at noon, eating a hot dog, listening to a small-town community band play "Stars and Stripes Forever."
Then, at 10 p.m., the right place is the back of a minivan in a weedy field, surrounded by pickup trucks, all with our radios tuned to patriotic music on the local radio, watching fireworks. The music doesn't quite start and end in sync with the show, so the grand finale is to the tune of a tire-store commercial.
We had to travel 700-plus miles to my mom's house for this home-town Independence Day, but it's worth it every year.
Then, at 10 p.m., the right place is the back of a minivan in a weedy field, surrounded by pickup trucks, all with our radios tuned to patriotic music on the local radio, watching fireworks. The music doesn't quite start and end in sync with the show, so the grand finale is to the tune of a tire-store commercial.
We had to travel 700-plus miles to my mom's house for this home-town Independence Day, but it's worth it every year.
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